


Making A Good Impression

by TheWrongKindOfPC



Category: Cracked: After Hours
Genre: 5+1 Things, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 20:20:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5469662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>“But the point is that female power in society has been vilified as witchcraft since the middle ages,” Katie says, which is probably a good point, but significantly less important than getting Dan to do his Wicked Witch of The West impression once more with feeling to be immortalized in video on Soren’s phone.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>In which Soren has an inner monologue, and a perfectly good comedic bit is beaten like the proverbial dead horse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Making A Good Impression

**Author's Note:**

  * For [abriata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/abriata/gifts).



> This was inspired by abriata's interest in unexpected competence and unexpected incompetence in these characters. 
> 
> Huge thanks to you-know-who-you-are for a) introducing me to this series, b) talking through several versions of this story with me, and c) giving it a read-through to be sure it's fit to print. <3 you.
> 
> The Community reference snuck its way in, sorrynotsorry.

1.

Soren’s seen _About A Boy_ , and he has no interest in turning into Hugh Grant, so he doesn’t date single parents that often. Still, he hadn't known Stephanie had a kid when he met her, and by the time they got around to that part of the conversation, he was intrigued enough to take the chance anyway.

Twenty minutes into dinner, he’s starting to think he probably should have just stuck to his general policy. She hasn’t had much time to keep up with movies or TV since the second kid, so a solid third of Soren’s conversational material is out, and the children keep coming up in conversation on her end, which he guesses is probably natural, but is also definitely cramping his style. That’s why when she does say something he’s got a good reply to, he jumps on it embarrassingly fast.

“It’s stupid, right?” she’s saying. “But Sean’s fourteen, now, and David is nine, and they were both bored out of their minds stuck home from school sick for almost a week, and I wanted to share something with them that I loved when I was their age.”

“That’s not stupid,” Soren tells her, because whether it is or not, depending on what she tried to show them, it’s still clearly the right answer in this conversation.

“So I started looking through the DVDs I’d picked up over the years, and I found Footloose,” she says, and Soren can't help it, he cracks the fuck up.

“I mean, I know, pre-teen boys aren’t exactly the target audience,” she says in the face of his helpless laughter, and while she sounds fairly indulgent, she also sounds like Soren isn’t likely to get laid tonight, even though she’s already told him the boys are off at her ex-mother-in-law’s for he night, so he really ought to figure out a way to salvage this moment.

“No, it’s not that,” he tells her. “It’s a great movie, and it’s good for kids to expand their cultural horizons. It’s just, I have this friend who does a totally priceless impression of Lithgow in that movie. Hang on, I think I actually have a video here somewhere…”

2.

“No, wait, hold that thought,” Soren half-shouts, digging around in his pocket for his phone.

“…and your little dog, too?” Dan finishes the impression at half-intensity, hands up in an _I’m unarmed_ gesture.

“But the point is that female power in western society has been vilified as witchcraft since the middle ages,” Katie says, which is probably a good point, but is significantly less important than getting Dan to do his Wicked Witch of The West impression once more with feeling to be immortalized in video on Soren’s phone.

“I never liked how she went after the dog, too, though,” Michael says. “Toto never did anything to her.”

“Oh, and Dorothy did?” Dan sounds almost as offended on her behalf as he gets on Peter Parker’s, and now Soren this thinking about Judy Garland in a Spidey suit but that, too, is something to pursue another day, because right now, Soren is on a mission.

“Well, she crashed a house on top of Wicked Witchy’s sister, I’d probably be pretty pissed, too.” 

Michael sounds like he’s given it a lot of thought, and a part of Soren actually wants to hear what he has to say to follow that up, but that’s not quite enough to keep him from breaking in, “Daniel, focus. Do it again—do it for the fans.”

“‘Oh, and Dorothy did?’” Dan parrots hesitantly, and the Soren’s head-shake has never _been_ more expressively disappointed.

“Don’t make him do it again,” and that’s Katie, who clearly doesn’t appreciate the positive impact Soren is having on the world, or at least on his own ability to save awkward moments. Luckily, Soren feels entirely un-compelled to listen to her.

“Again,” he urges Dan, phone out. 

3.

Dan types three more words, then deletes them. Then types two of them over again and Soren has never been simultaneously more and less engaged in something Dan is working on. He's following the additions and subtractions to the letter as Dan writes, but he's also not taking in a word of what those letters are adding up to.

"Daniel, you have a duty to share this with the world," Soren tries one more time.

"What I have," Dan answers, tone distracted, "Is a deadline. Oh," and here he sounds a little more animated, "And the beginning of a cold, too, I think. Come bug me about it in a couple days, okay? It'll be better, I swear."

Soren is pretty sure that's what being _rejected_ sounds like, actually, though it's not a sensation he's used to. It's also kind of a valid excuse, though, and now that Dan mentions it, he's got a deadline, too.

"Alright," he tells Dan, magnanimous, "But you'd better be ready to bring your A-game next time.

"Sure, sure," Dan says, waving him out.

As he's leaving, Other Katie, who has apparently been watching them as a part of her own procrastination, stops him to ask, "Wait, so what was he butchering this time? Darth Vader? Kermit the Frog? Spock?"

"If you must know," Soren says, and apparently she must, because she's still looking at him, "It was Michael, and it was incandescent."

4.

"Thou must allow me," Dan starts, and it's physically painful to hear him get the voice so right and the words so wrong on this one, "to tell you how bangin' I think you look, even though you're poor." 

“No, no-no-no-no, If you’re going to do a Colin Firth that’s that spot-on, you’ve got to get the line right.”

When Soren walked into the diner tonight, he wasn’t planning on revealing his long-held and deep-seated admiration for Mr. Darcy, but these things happen, and he’s not about to be ashamed of it. There’s a reason the man is one of the most iconic characters in the English canon, after all.

“Yeah, because he’s a massive _nerd_ ,” Katie says, and Soren looks down to find himself clutching at his chest like he’s been shot.

“You take that back right now.” It’s been a weirdly civil conversation so far, but some things, Soren knows, are worth fighting for, and the credibility of his historic and literary brethren is definitely on the list.

“It’s true, though,” Dan says. “Darcy is massively socially inept. And _I’m_ saying that.”

“The guy’s the original stone cold fox, and _I_ am the one who’s saying that one. Lizzie’s so intriguing to him because she’s the first girl he’s ever met who’s not flinging her petticoats at him,” Soren says.

“Yeah, so he likes her,” Dan agrees. “So what does he do about it? He insults her when he first meets her, assumes her sister is a gold-digger, and then continues to insult her to her face even as he’s proposing. The only time he gets it right is when he’s far away from her, so he tries to tell her how he feels through completely incomprehensible gestures.”

“Hah!” Soren shouts. “I _knew_ you knew the story better than that. I bet you’ve even read the book, right? Come on, do the line right this time.”

Dan sighs, but when he speaks, it is _unmistakably_ Firth’s Darcy saying, “You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

After a moment, Soren fumbles to switch off the camera on his phone. Katie snorts. Michael starts to say something. Katie elbows him in the side.

Dan clears his throat and asks, tone incredulous, “Did I actually win with that?”

"Definitely not," Katie assures him.

5.

“You do know he’s not that good, right?” Katie says, and Soren would be upset, he’d argue, but he feels like Ash Ketchum, he feels like he’s caught them all, because Dan’s Snape is _on point_ , okay, mainlining all of the Harry Potter movies in one weekend so he could stop missing the references the rest of them made had clearly paid off, Soren should recommend it to aspiring actors, or something.

Still, that kind of lies and slander deserves at least some kind of expression of outrage, so Soren looks at her with, he’s sure, betrayal written into the line of his gaze.

“She’s right, you know,” Dan says, and he sounds a little sheepish, like maybe he actually believes it, and _that_ , that Soren really can’t let stand.

“Daniel,” he tells him. “You have a gift, and that gift deserves to be nurtured, nurtured and shared with the world.” It feels like a solemn, emotionally charged moment to Soren, and if Michael and Katie’s twin expressions of disbelief are anything to go by, they feel it, too.

Dan’s own expression looks a little bit like barely suppressed laughter, but is probably actually excitement and pride. Soren understands. It’s not often that he gets the approval of someone as awesome as himself, either.

“Thanks, Soren,” Dan says.

+1

When it happens, Soren is too taken-aback to actually reach for his phone.

It’s Katie that breaks the silence when Dan—no, when _Batman_ first finishes speaking. “That’s a pretty good impression of the Cookie Monster doing an impression of Batman, actually.”

“Wherever there’s tomfoolery and joy, I’m there,” Dan-as-Batman goes on, voice hoarse and cracking under the weight of his agonized sense of responsibility for all of Gotham—for too much of the world. Even broad, cloaked shoulders can’t carry the weight of all of those lives forever without cracking under the strain. “But sometimes I’m not, because I’m out in the night. Staying vigilant. Watching. Lurking.”

“What, no camera?” Soren distantly hears Michael ask him.

Dan-as-Batman reaches for Soren’s plate and grabs a fry without asking and Soren kind of wants to die, there’s a voice in the back of his head that won’t shut up about how exactly none of this should be even remotely attractive. The rest of him really doesn’t care.

“Oh, are those up for grabs?” Michael asks, reaching for Soren’s plate. 

Soren slaps his hand back without looking. Dan—actually Dan this time, and Soren can’t pretend he’s not a little disappointed by the change—says, “Jeez, Christian Bale must have just been drinking gallons of honey between takes, when he wasn’t swinging from rafters in his down-time as part of his method.” His voice does sound a little hoarse, and he coughs a bit at the end, and nothing in Soren’s world makes any sense.

“I’ll, uh, be back,” he says, pushing away from the table and heading for the bathroom.

As he goes, he can hear Michael whisper-shouting too loud, “That was _weird_ , I haven’t seen him that out of it since that time when he was coughing up all of the feathers.”


End file.
